 According to the Court, the city owes its genesis in the Maurya and Gupta period and it was an established trading post long before the Slave Dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Portuguese, the French or the British established a modern township there.References to the existence of an ancient riverine port (named Kalikata) exist in the travel journals of Chinese scholars and Persian merchants dating from centuries BCE.The Hindu epic Mahabharata, lists the King of "Vanga" (meaning Bengal), as having fought alongside the Kauravas in the great war.